Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

“Umm.” Maya, too, was feeling awkward now, wondering if perhaps she was making a social faux pas. Maya brought her arm out of the hot water, shook the bubbles off as best she could, then pointed at her neck first before touching her fingers to the inside of her arm. Maya watched the dawning of comprehension in the young girl’s face, followed by the return of confusion, although the nervous tension seemed to have evaporated into the air like the steam rising from her bath.

“This is my stamp of citizenship.” The girl pulled her ringed, loose braid of raven locks aside with her left hand, exposing her neck to Maya’s gaze the way a lover would open a blouse. Maya could see the tattoo well now and leaned forward in the tub to get a closer look. It looked to Maya like a shield, a device, a family crest of some kind. Framed by a square no bigger than five square centimeters, there was what looked like a deformed rabbit under a full moon, perched on the ground before some half-buried root.

Then the girl released her fingertips from their duty and turned her arm over. Maya studied the square of plastic that embossed the girl’s skin. The plastic was whitish, semi-transparent and had a nipple-like, stunted tube protruding about one centimeter from it at a 15-degree angle.

“What is it?” Maya asked and reached her hand out to touch it. The girls all giggled a bit. The one whose arm Maya was examining shook her head and wrinkled her nose.

“What’s so funny?” Maya smiled at her embarrassment.

“You don’t have one?” the girl asked, stretching her neck to look over Maya’s body.

“No.” It was Maya’s turn to wrinkle her nose. The girls seemed genuinely confused now.

“You have neither? No Citizen Stamp nor tax connection?” the girl asked.

When Maya shook her head, she may just as well have told them that she didn’t have a nose or that she didn’t eat food and breathe air.

The girls were clearly confused and taken aback. The girl who had her arm out for Maya to examine recoiled a bit, her sense of place and duty unable to suppress the rising tide of xenophobia within her. Maya knew that something was off, so she played it cool and changed the subject quickly.

“Please, shave my armpits too, when you’re done with my legs.”

After the bath, the girls dried her off with soft towels that smelled of lemons and anointed her with oils on her neck, wrists, behind her ears, and her breasts. When they went to dab the same oil on the insides of her thighs, she stopped them with a gentle hand and said, “I do not think that is necessary. I have no intention of anyone coming close to that area.” She received another look of scared confusion from the serving girls but paid it no mind.

Maya then allowed the girls to dress her in the undergarments and gown they had brought with them. They were opulent and finely crafted, clothing worthy of a goddess indeed. The gown was a rich cream color, more eggnog than white, with sewn-on pearls and lush ruffles flowing down the sides of the princess seams. The raised and regal collar, along with the long, trailing train, gave the dress a formal and expensive appearance. She looked like the mistress of a manor. They brought her jeweled earrings also. When they had finished, Maya presented herself to Lucy, who had been waiting in the suite’s foyer.

“What do you think?” Maya asked playfully, executing a pirouette while holding her dress up off the floor.

“Better you than me, my lady.” Lucy smiled saucily. The serving girls, having gathered up the dirty towels and their things, politely made their way to the door and bowed out, explaining that Maya could expect an escort to dinner within the hour—a promise that proved to be true.

Her escorts arrived not thirty minutes after the girls’ departure, two men in fine suits. Their black hair was slicked back, with golden bracelets adorning their wrists, and tuxedo-style holsters housing pistols under their open jackets. They were polite in demeanor, though Maya could detect an undercurrent, an edge of something sinister, telling her that these guys were toughs and had dealt out their fair share of cruelty in service to their master.

It was what Lucy noticed, though, that put her on high alert.

“Neither of them shows heat signatures in my thermal optics,” Lucy whispered into Maya’s ear.

“Is something wrong?” one of the men asked, his question obviously prompted by the whispering.

“No, nothing at all. Everything is fine. Please, lead the way.” Maya, ever the professional performer, maintained a superb poker face and secretly hoped that she knew what she was doing. She assured herself that Lucy was with her, and besides, she could bet that either Jon or Carbine or both had just noticed the same thing as Lucy, and hopefully even now had the goons in their cross-hairs.

Jon had been watching when the serving girls arrived. Carbine had taken Maya’s advice to get some rest and was sound asleep. After a quick crash-course from his bud on how to operate the scope, Jon was soon settled in for a long evening of sniper stake-out.

He watched the young girls enter and quickly ascertained that they weren’t a threat to the goddess. However, he soon became flustered when Maya began to disrobe.

A battle between the Olympian desire to keep watch over Maya and the titanic desire to be a gentleman and look away, to not watch Maya in the nude, commenced in his mind.

He couldn’t make up his mind quickly enough and watched as Maya dropped her nightgown to the floor moments after Ratt had left the room.

His eyes bugged, and his heart skipped a beat. He could feel heat rising, among other things, and his cheeks flushing.

He quickly turned away, cursing himself as he did so.

Shit, shit, shit.

He lay with his back against the rock he had been